Stakes is High: Life After the American Dream

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“The Forethought”

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

“The Afterthought”

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2 Summary: “Justice”

Smith begins this essay by explaining that he knows he lives in the hood, where he says trash is the telltale sign. The amount of trash is a socioeconomic indicator, a reminder that his neighborhood is not the priority of city officials, who could place more trash cans on the sidewalks if they really wanted to, but don’t. Instead of trash cans, city officials have deemed the heavy police presence in the neighborhood a necessity. All day and night, the police patrol and harass.

Smith then provides a brief history of the police in America, who initially “were charged with preventing slave revolts” (64). The police would then become the primary enforcer of Prohibition, the uprisings of the Civil Rights movement, the “War on Drugs,” and counter-terrorism initiatives that surveilled and targeted Muslim after 9/11. Smith argues that the police have never been part of a solution in America, but instead contribute to the ongoing belief that people themselves are the problem. Later in the chapter, Smith suggests that abolishing the police is the best way forward for America. According to Smith, the “police are needed only insofar as there is a need to police the borders of the American—pardon me, US—identity, meaning that they are needed to determine who is worthy of life, liberty, and happiness” (93). As an institution, police exist as an obstruction of justice in America, with its insistence on oppressive tactics such as “stop-and-frisk.”

According to Smith, social justice in America is inextricably linked to economic justice. Within the constraints of American capitalism, the poor will always be exploited, creating conditions of despair and, subsequently, violence. Smith compares the promise of capitalism to the promises of a pimp, who uses pressure and deceit in order to sell his workers on the allure of his pitch. The American worker, just like sex workers fooled by their pimps, fall under the spell of the American Dream, which ultimately doesn’t deliver on its capitalist premise.

Smith concludes his arguments in this essay by claiming that the United States, operationally, is more like an empire than a true democracy, as evidenced by its border regulation and its dismissive attitude toward Puerto Rico, even after the devastation of Hurricane Maria. Yet even for American “citizens” the plight of being marginalized and ignored reveals the chasms that exist within the American experience. Smith uses the water crisis in Flint and the oil pipeline protests at Standing Rock as his primary examples here. He ends the essay by ruminating on the poetic irony that may someday happen as the statue of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to make a run at the presidency, will provide shade for someone experiencing homelessness.

Part 2 Analysis

In this essay, Smith develops two of the most dominant themes throughout the collection of essays: the police as an instrument of oppression, and American capitalism as “pimping.” An alternative title to this essay could have actually been “Injustice,” since this is Smith’s emphasis as he expresses his disdain for the police as a natural consequence of a capitalist system. Only for a brief moment, towards the end of the essay, does Smith actually define what he means by justice: “justice is a proactive commitment to providing each person with the material and social conditions in which they can both survive and thrive as a healthy and self-actualized human being” (93). The majority of the essay, however, is an indictment of two of the primary forces of injustice in America.

As Smith paints a picture of his neighborhood, for example, he details that what the casual observer notices is essentially threefold: trash, police, and that it is primarily occupied by a “mostly poor, mostly black, mostly immigrant” (58) population. The trash in the neighborhood is symbolic of politician’s priorities when considering a neighborhood like this—less trash cans, more police. Smith rationalizes this by suggesting that to city officials and police alike, “Blackness is itself the evidence of wrongdoing” (61).

To Smith, therefore, the police are a historic and contemporary threat to justice, a constant instrument of oppression. The very existence of the police and America’s justification for its methods is evidence enough that it should be abolished. Smith openly admits his hatred for the police, not in the sense that he hates individual officers, but that he hates “any institution that exists as an obstruction to justice” (93). The only real solution to removing this barrier for justice to prevail is to abolish the police altogether. Otherwise, trying to maintain the police while tinkering with its flaws will keep neighborhoods like Smith’s in the grasp of systemic oppression. As a Black man contending with the hypocrisies of the American Dream, he is fed up with the delusions that result from an unwavering belief in the police as a force for good.

This oppression relates to the theme of capitalism as “pimping” because Smith links the injustices perpetrated by police to the inherent injustice of American capitalism. Where the capitalist and the pimp differ, however, is in the way violence is outsourced: “The pimp must use his own hands. A legit capitalist can call upon the violence of the state to act in their stead” (73). As Smith connects the foundational principles of American economics to the plight of sex workers, he reveals a boldness that comes from his own stated desire to “stating, in clear language, what you want because otherwise you are beholden to the current state of consciousness and accepted wisdom” (92), an idea he expresses after proposing the abolishment of the police.